Hi,
Some time ago, circa May 2015, there was a long thread called "Biting the
Bullet" [1] where some others complained about the lack of pdftk on F21 and later.
(This complaint also manifested itself sometime later.)
In response, and with both general and more specific help from those more experienced, I
was able to put together an RPM for pdf-stapler as an alternative to pdftk. I submitted to
a black hole called Fedora packaging where there was some churn, some more suggestions (a
few contradicting the other) which I duly implemented but no one actually able to move the
process forward. However, it sits here:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1234210
unassigned. It has passed through rpmlint (no errors, only a few nonsensical spelling
warnings) and whatever else it was supposed to pass as per packaging guidelines. So also
is the case of sylfilter which I packaged separately, and no one has even bothered to
comment on:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1265685
Now, I understand that quality control is an important part of the Fedora packaging which
is what makes it a good product (and I am no great RPM-maker, witness my questions on the
subject), and there is a dearth of enough people eligible to assign to, but surely, there
must be some better way to handle new proposed packages. For instance, if automated setups
clear a package, perhaps it would be better to move it to the top of the list or even
clear it for testing and see what happens? Otherwise, there will be frustration and the
pool of packagers will not grow. Not to mention that if packages sit like this this for
months before being acted upon, then the original packager will have lost context and
memory and moved on (certainly it would be frustrating and more onerous on him/her than it
would be if it were acted upon sooner). Otherwise, people will move on.
I don't need these packages because I have them for myself. Indeed, I could be more
sloppy in creating these rpms (or not even bothering to do so), but the reason for
putting this out is benefit to the community which has also benefited me/us. This is
especially true for niche packages such as sylfilter, etc which may not even have much
users who would be willing to test it.
I have some experience with submitting packages for R. My experience there is that if it
passes all the tests, it is by and large through, but if it does not (surprisingly, Macs
are the killers in most cases), it is not, and feedback is fairly quick.
Perhaps, it would be worthwhile to think about how to streamline the process. At this
point, I am fully expecting the familiar notice for EOL eventually.
Best wishes,
Ranjan
[1]
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/2015-May/460623.html
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